ON KEEN, WHY HE IS MISLED AND HOW HE MISREPRESENTS ME

First, how I am misrepresented in the previous post:

THE ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS

KEEN: Will thinks that "the crisis isn't really that big or that urgent, and its solution will come naturally through the shifting of economic incentives in capitalist systems."

HARPER: "I do think the crisis is big and urgent, but I am not as concerned about the imminent end of the world as Eric is. I think his misunderstanding of my position comes from statements I have made along the lines of 'the environment is not my issue.' We all dedicate ourselves to something. I am largely concerned with issues regarding poverty. The environment is an important issue, particularly for the poor, but I am going to leave saving the toucans up to Eric because, although I think it's important, I just don't really get worked up about it."

"The solution to our environmental problems will definitely not come naturally through the market. I think economic incentives will probably stop us from completely destroying the planet, but we of course would prefer to have a good, clean, toucan-filled working environment rather than one that barely enables us to eek out a living. I do think that the most effective means of accomplishing this will be to make the costs of goods reflect their true cost by taxing them. Thus, a gallon of gas should cost the costs to the business plus the green house gas costs plus the price of having and maintaining the highways, etc. "

Second, WHY I THINK KEEN IS MISLED:

In a previous post I spoke about the importance of doing what works rather than what we want to work, essentially the possible over the ideal. KEEN mentioned several times about reducing globalization to a minimal level, to focusing on local or regional economies, to giving a human face to our economic interactions. Whether we want it or not, that will not happen. Globalization has happened and is here to stay. Our solutions to issues must work within that framework rather than pretend we can reverse it. Yes, the environment was at its strongest when we lived in small tribes in the woods, but we don't any more. We live in large, dirty cities filled with millions of people creating tons of waste and shipping things around the world. Instead of wishing to cut the population by 6 billion people and go back to the woods method, we should think about solutions to problems we face today given our context and the tools we have to work with. Dealing with environmental woes by reversing globalization is like dealing with noise pollution by trying to get everyone to speak sign language.